Since two decades author and leadership consultant Frank Kanu helps top managers and executives to improve success ratios and productivity.
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© Frank D. Kanu All rights reserved.

These Genius One Inc. Articles are published here for the purpose of helping to improve your personal and organizational performances; designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Please contact us directly if you need the word or pdf version of one or more articles.


Free Articles


I'm always lecturing our clients on the underlying theme here - give it more time. Lets talk more often. We need more walk-thru's with your staff. Acceptance testing doesn't just mean you have the right to test it - you need to test it.
Michael Stein, President
Members Only Software, Inc.
What To Do When Your IT Project Is Late,
Over Budget,
and Looks Like It’s Never Going To Work


Here's a scary statistic. According to four prominent research firms, only around 20% of all IT projects are finished in a timely manner. By "timely" the researchers mean without loss of quality or being over budget. They go on to say the average project runs approximately 200 percent late, roughly 200 percent over budget, and contains only 2/3 of the original functionality.
 

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The issues below are not just for the IT manager to solve. If managers throughout the company share in the responsibility, results will be quicker and longer lasting. This article supports our position that information systems are underutilized and existing resources can be used to increase ROI and performance.
Kay Graham-Gilbert
The Top Three Problems IT Managers Face and How to Overcome Them

Today's business environment has changed drastically from just a few years back. Rather than working exclusively with equipment, data, and systems, today's IT managers face issues such as cross training, personnel management, interdepartmental communication, and a widening job scope for all IT employees.
 

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Your Success

Success   starts in your mind.
      Positive Thinking creates the advantage.
Success   comes with a good mood.
      Listen to your most preferred CD before an important meeting.

 

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Job Description for a Senior Software Engineer

This is the Job Description for a Senior Software Engineer
(Since years at the top of major search engines)
 

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This is an excerpt from Frank's book
Stop Telling... Start Leading!
The Art of Managing People by Asking Questions

That's a good piece Frank.

Humans are superb at not seeing, being blind to what they find subconciously unacceptable, or in business even worse the collective not see.

More...
Ethics and Leadership?

Ethics and leadership both seem to be abstract and ambiguous—so imagine what happens when we discuss ethical leadership. Ethical leadership is not about how to lead to reach specific goals, but what ethical affects leadership has. Ethics aren't morals themselves but the meaning of moral ways and actions. Ethics don't decide, nor do they take decisions away. They serve as a means of guidance—to find answers, make decisions, and know how to justify them.
 

 
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This is an excerpt from Frank's book
Stop Telling... Start Leading!
The Art of Managing People by Asking Questions

Management and Management functions

Which developments led in practice to the irreversible separating of management functions and to the development of an own management style?

    First, let's start off by defining both terms...
 

 
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After a recent database review session our development dba pointed out to me that he wants every table's primary key to be a identity column. I did not like this suggestion because I believe when dealing with reference tables the primary key should the same as the logical key. For transactional tables it makes more sense to the link the primary key to a physical key. Well after some research his logic starts to make sense. Here is why.
Hannes Strydom
How to speed up a database which has gotten slow

While the actual database design usually is able to handle the amount of stored data without major performance problems newly added clients and their data volume changes that. Once the size of a database grows close to 1 GB, the number of concurrent user exceeds 20 or the number of new a-records goes beyond 200 an hour, the need for speed improvement is raised.
 

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Great Article Frank, A gem
William Buist
Nothing Compares To The Power Of Trust

While researching for this article, two points stood out:
  1. Many articles about networking sound the same: Different authors, different words, but an identical message. "Making the right impression at a networking meeting is important", but that alone does not help you find new business.
  2. There are only a few articles focusing on networking and trust.

 

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Are Soft Factors What Makes The Corporate Culture Soft?

Corporate culture and the age of a company are in direct relation to each other: The older the corporation the more developed and prominent the corporate culture. It develops with success but even more with failure. The corporate culture shows it real value when the company goes through a crisis...
 

 
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Cubicles or Just Stables?

While working on one large scale software project the company moved. It is already difficult enough to manage projects involving more then 10 people, legacy code and tables put together complimented with the name "database". Plus the deadlines had been put together including resources which were not available at the time the project started. But adding an office move to the mix was something many would name insane.
 

 
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One-On-One interviews

Ever wondered why you need One-on-One interviews and what they can do for you?

A few years ago I met with the CFO of an one time European trust. Business was going pretty well, but costs where out of hands. The CFO felt that most of the long standing problems were related to the existing legacy systems but the CTO was a personal friend with a friendship with the CEO. The CFO just didn't see a way of talking to the CTO without it turning into another argument. Even so the CTO had to report to the CFO the CFO couldn't do anything because of the CTO's ties to the CEO.
 

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Serious Security Problems

Although we were disappointed to learn that you guys had known about this vulnerability for several months and did not notify us. [Or fixed it!]

Classic.
Scary.

How can you look at yourself in the mirror knowing that your software has a vulnerability but doing nothing about it? How can you even sleep tight a night?


 

 
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Kick one out!

Every once in a while there comes the discussion up who is an asset in a team and who is not. Some will - even vigorous - supporting others. And some will fight to get rid of someone else.
 

 
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Whose responsibility is it anyway?

Here we have all these discussion of security, personal privacy and so on. The amount of bugs found in commercial and non-commercial software is steadily on the rise.

Do you feel safe and protected from adware and spyware when using your most preferred browser? Have second thoughts about RFID when walking through a store and seeing all the products with tags on them?
 

 
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Successful in Teams

Working in a team should be more efficient and successful then working alone. But every team has to be put together properly and has to follow a few rules to be a success.
 

 
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Organizational Charts

Isn't it surprising how many businesses are run without any structure: "We are still small—that can wait!" For me that always begs the question: How much growth do they anticipate?
 

 
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Social, Cultural, Economic, Legal and Political Differences in Sierra Leone and how this affects International Business

Sierra Leone is located in West Africa with a population of about 5 million (UN, 2003).  Although rich with diamonds, titanium ore, bauxite, iron ore, gold, and chromite (CIA, 2003), thanks to an 11-year war, and corrupt leaders it is now amongst the poorest country in the world. In the following topics, I will touch on how the differences shared by Sierra Leone and other countries affects international business.
 

 
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Descent into Hell

When you are familiar with the software industry you know that deadlines are always set very tight. Most are so unrealistically they will never be reached.
 

 
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The Top 8 Rules for Outstanding Business Communication

  1. Use only words or phrases that you also use when speaking freely.

 

 
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Case Studies

Case Study 1

This particular manufacturer had a few hundred customers, but had thousands of articles with a few million more in stock. They were using an outdated system, but everyone was happy with it.
 

 
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Case Study 2

This case study involved 100 users working with a system that had been in development over a 10 year period. The task of the development team was to rewrite the old system with a new compiler and new user interface. Existing specifications were impressive, but were for some reason changed on a weekly basis, which ultimately downgraded the value of the software.
 

 
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Case Study 3

A piece of software with more than 500 installations and 25 users on average was due for a new version release in June. But, by October, nothing was ready to roll out. The software, when tried with different code bases worked with limited functionality. As a result, the majority of the software's programmers were busy fixing bugs.
 

 
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© Frank D. Kanu All rights reserved.

These Genius One Inc. Articles are published here for the purpose of helping to improve your personal and organizational performances; designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Please contact us directly if you need the word or pdf version of one or more articles.


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Fax: (661) 451-6960 · E-mail:
info@GeniusOne.com

 


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